Quer is an adverb meaning "across," and a Denker is a thinker (from denken - to think). In combination, the words indicate a person who thinks independently or "outside the box," as the saying goes. Querdenkerin is the female form. But whatever the gender, the implication is that the ideas of such a person are not always understood or accepted.
Addendum (Jan. 2021 during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic): When I published this post six years ago, I believed that Querdenker had a positive connotation, one that identified a person willing to go against established orthodoxies. That belief has changed. The term has now been hijacked by a movement consisting of a motley crew of pandemic deniers, conspiracy theorists, and plain crackpots, with a good portion of neo-Nazis thrown in (as an effort to rattle the established order), who organize protests against the measures the government established to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus. I find it particularly irking ("obscene" would actually be a better word) that some speakers at Querdenker rallies style themselves as members of a resistance, even have the Frechheit (nerve) to compare themselves to Germans of the Nazi-resistance who lost their lives in the process.
These people are not Querdenker; they are Nichtdenker (non-thinkers). I don’t think the negative connotation the term has now assumed for me will go away in my lifetime.
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